Mikhail Nicholaievich Sobolev, instructor in the Moscow University, living at this time with the Tolstois as a teacher to Count M. L. Tolstoi. N. A. Kasatkin, a well-known Russian painter. [215] In regard to this letter of the Japanese, Tolstoi in a letter of August 8, 1897, wrote: “Recently I received a letter from Crosby with an enclosure of a letter from a Japanese who lived with him in New York. The Japanese read _The Gospel in Brief_, and writes that it explained to him the meaning of life and that he is now going home to Japan, in order to apply these beliefs to his life and to the life of others and to establish _settlements_ there. A splendid letter which touched me deeply and gave me joy. The same truth evidently is accessible and necessary to every one.” [216] Count L. L. Tolstoi (born in 1869), Tolstoi’s third son, and his wife, the Princess Dora Fedorovna (born Westerlund). [217] B. N. Leontev, at one time calling himself a follower of Tolstoi, committed suicide in 1909. [218] In the _Russkia Viedomosti_ (No. 211, 1897), in the report of the missionary congress which took place in Kazan in August, 1897, in which many high representatives of the hierarchy participated, it was stated among other things, that for combating the spread of sects and dissensions, the congress considered it necessary to adopt the following measures: To forbid the dissenters to open schools for their children and to close all the schools existing at the present moment; to declare the adherence to a particularly obnoxious sect as a compromising circumstance and to thus give the right to peasant communities to expel from their midst members discovered as belonging to an obnoxious sect and to exile them to Siberia. For the sake of combating dissensions and sects, still other measures were suggested and discussed at the congress, which among others were: The soliciting of the passing of a law, by which it would be possible to take away by force the children of the dissenters and sectarians, and the establishing of asylums in every diocese for bringing them up in the orthodox faith.... The Archbishop of Riazan, Meletie, called the attention of the congress to another very important measure, and to his mind, a very useful one for the success of missionary work: the confiscation of the property of the dissenters and sectarians. [219] P. A. Boulanger was sent abroad for continuing the affair of helping the Dukhobors, for which V. G. Chertkov, P. I. Biriukov and I. M. Tregubov were exiled before him. [220] In his letter to the Swedish papers (not yet printed in Russia) Tolstoi wrote that the Nobel prize ought to be awarded to the Dukhobors, as people who have done their utmost towards the establishment of universal peace. This letter, dated August 27, 1898, was printed in P. I. Biriukov’s paper: _Svobodnaia Mysl_ (Geneva), No. 4, 1899.